Blocking Terrorists. Or Not.

Trump’s order is a mess, but until a broken immigration system is fixed, he’s more right than wrong.

How many Iranian terrorists have staged attacks in the United States? How many Sudanese? Or Iraqis or Syrians? Or Yemenis? Or Libyans? They are, of course, trick questions as the answer is none. Pakistanis, yes, central Asians, yes, a Somali, a couple of Egyptians and lots and lots of Saudi Arabians. Somalia is on the list of countries now completely blocked for travel to the U.S., but citizens of the other countries have never staged a terrorist attack and are being restricted anyway. And Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where Americans are perceived extremely negatively and where most terrorists have actually come from, are not on the list.

Donald Trump issued on Thursday an executive order, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” Some critics are claiming that several of the Muslim countries exempted are where Donald Trump has investments, but I don’t think that is in any way true. Trump raised the issue of immigration and refugee security back in the summer, and his views have been consistent. I rather believe that the current plan is a continuation of reactionary and ill-conceived policies that have been hanging around since 9/11 that see Muslim states as definable through a process that is more political than driven by the reality of where terrorism comes from. The seven countries in question were already classified as “countries of concern” under President Barack Obama and subjected to additional scrutiny. Congress also produced a bill last year that proposed stopping all refugee intake from Syria and Iraq until it could be certified that the new arrivals pose no security threat. The bill did not become law, but it reflected broad sentiment in the legislature that not enough was being done to determine just exactly whom we were letting into the country.

Blocking the entry of people by nationality, even if they have satisfied all normal requirements for visa issuance, might well be illegal under current immigration law, and the executive order is currently being challenged in the courts. And some are also noting that if it truly were a question of national security based on discernible facts, Saudis and Pakistanis would be blocked and subject to intensive secondary review for visa issuance, not Iranians or Sudanese. And what about the omission of Afghanistan, where numerous Americans have been killed by Afghans, though admittedly there have been no attacks generated against the United States itself?

And the executive order truly lacked any touch of common decency, which might have been considered without weakening its intent. It could and should have permitted visa and green-card holders already in transit or arriving at U.S. ports of entry to be godfathered in. The grief experienced by divided families and loved ones ricocheting between airports is just not acceptable and was widely played in the media worldwide. Only on Sunday did the administration change course and say green-card holders would not be barred.

All of which is not intended to suggest that the executive order is completely wrong-headed. The countries in question, with the exception of Sudan and Iran (included because they are, for reasons that basically make no sense, labeled state sponsors of terrorism), do indeed have major radicalization problems, as described in the State Department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism. It is quite sensible to block travel by citizens of those countries until one can establish procedures to make sure that militants are not being admitted to the U.S., because embassies overseas have only limited ability to vet prospective visitors or immigrants. To be sure, the Obama administration has insisted that it applies an extreme vetting process to would-be refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, and tourists, but it has failed to provide any details of how the system actually works.

It should be assumed that groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda would be delighted to infiltrate refugee, immigrant, and tourist travel movements into Western Europe and the U.S., which makes American embassies and consulates overseas the choke points for keeping potential terrorists out. Having myself worked the visa lines in consulates overseas, I understand just how difficult it is to be fair to honest travelers while weeding out those whose intentions are less honorable. At the consulate, an initial screening based on name and birth date determines whether an applicant is on any no-fly or terrorism-associate lists. Anyone coming up is automatically denied, but the lists include a great deal of inaccurate information, so they probably “catch” more innocent people than they do actual would-be terrorists. Individuals who have traveled to Iran, Iraq, Sudan, or Syria since 2011, or who are citizens of those countries, are also selected out for additional review.

For visitors who pass the initial screening and who do not come from one of the 38 “visa waiver” countries, mostly in Europe, the next step is the application for a visitor’s visa, called a B-2. At that point, the consulate’s objective is to determine whether the potential traveler has a good reason to visit the U.S., has the resources to pay for the trip, and is likely to return home before the visa expires. The process is document-driven, with the applicants presenting evidence of bank accounts, employment, family ties, and equity like homeownership.

Whether an applicant hates America or not is inevitably hard to determine from documents. In some countries, the documentary evidence can be supplemented by police reports if the local government is cooperative. Some consulates employ investigators, generally ex-policemen, who are able to examine public records if there is any doubt about an applicant’s profile or intentions, but most governments do not permit access to official documents. Recently, background investigations have sometimes been supplemented by an examination of the applicant’s presence on the internet to determine whether he or she is frequenting militant sites or discussing political issues online. If the visa applicant is seeking to become a U.S. resident, the process is, of course, much more rigorous and takes much longer.

Both travel and immigrant visas are nevertheless a somewhat subjective process and as they are both document-driven and reliant on what a potential traveler says in his or her interview. In many places, official documents are the weak link, as they are easy to forge or can even be obtained in genuine form from corrupt bureaucrats. If one is unable to go the source of the document for verification, papers submitted in support of a visa application are frequently impossible to authenticate. So what does one do when applicants from countries in the throes of civil war—like Iraq, Syria, Libya, or Yemen—show up at a visa window, some of them with no documents at all? Or when such applicants constitute not a trickle but a flood applying for asylum or refugee status? It gets complicated, and Trump has a point in saying we should deny entry to all of them until procedures can be established for making those judgments in a more coherent fashion.

I personally believe that the United States has a moral obligation to accept a considerable number of refugees and asylum seekers from countries that it has intervened militarily in. Washington is also a signatory to the United Nations-administered agreements to resettle refugees, producing another steady stream of immigrants that Trump is currently blocking. Much of the refugee background vetting is carried out by the UN in a not-completely-transparent fashion, and the resettlement of those who are accepted in various places is done by quota—with the U.S. being the largest recipient country, expected to receive about 100,000 in 2017, a number that Trump intends to cut roughly in half.

But the current refugee policy unfortunately means accepting many who have been on the receiving end of U.S. military interventions. Some inevitably harbor thoughts of revenge against the West and the U.S. in particular, meaning that Washington has been taking in many people who have good reason to dislike the United States. This results in a home-grown problem that manifests itself in the courts, where most of those convicted in terrorism-related cases in the U.S. are foreign-born. America’s 100,000 Somali refugees have been a particular problem, with many returning home to join the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabaab.

There are a number of other issues that the executive order does not consider. Many of the most radicalized Muslims now carry European passports, and though some already receive additional scrutiny because of where they were born, they are able to travel relatively freely. Also, the executive order’s singling out of “religious minority” refugees for favorable treatment and the repeated use of expressions like “radical Islamic terrorism” will give ammunition to those who already believe that the “War on Terror” is actually a war on Islam. Finally, banning travel from certain countries invites reciprocity and other nations that are outraged by Trump’s move will require visas and screening for American travelers.

The real issue that Trump is and should be addressing is the federal government’s inability to vet visa applicants, immigrants, and refugees to a level that could be considered sufficient from a national-security perspective, a failure that has led some conservatives to complain that White House policy is to “invade the world, invite the world.” Trump’s demands to block many visitors and would-be residents might seem, and in some respects surely is, an overreaction, and it could have benefited from some fine-tuning to make the package less humiliating for travelers and more palatable for a global audience. But until a broken immigration system is fixed, he is more right than wrong.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest. This article is adapted in part from one he wrote last June.

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37 Responses to Blocking Terrorists. Or Not.

I hope this executive order on the minimal 7-country ban is just Trump getting started. There should be a wider ban on visas of all kinds from almost everywhere. We shouldn’t let ANYBODY in until we’ve got a system that provides much stronger guarantees than the current shambles. And it shouldn’t just be about terror. It should be about criminals of all kinds, countries that spy on us at unacceptable levels, and about people who come here to take our jobs.

“The real issue that Trump is and should be addressing is the federal government’s inability to vet visa applicants, immigrants, and refugees to a level that could be considered sufficient from a national-security perspective…Until a broken immigration system is fixed, he is more right than wrong.”

Giraldi asserts– regarding Trump investments in some countries inexplicably NOT blocked– “I don’t think that’s true.” NOT legitimate commentary. I wouldn’t let a sophomore get away with such a generalized, unfounded claim. Shouldn’t someone do the homework before he make public claims?

There is nothing new here. Trump is delivering what he repeatedly said he would do during his election campaign. Excluding Saudi Arabia from the list of countries of “concern”, should not be a surprise either. Saudi Arabia is undoubtedly one of the most brutal regimes in the world and the source of wahabi terrorism in Syria and Africa. Yet, excluding it clearly signifies a residuum of political correctness toward an “ally”. As we see, Trump’s war on the “swamp” and on political correctness has limits and is in this case an empty formula.

This is a balanced article, thank you. May I recommend David Frum’s article in the Atlantic as well. Bottom line this was executed with maximum stupidity and incompetence. A hallmark of this administration. And I am glad an army of lawyers is already mobilized especially to protect the rights of legitimate green card holders.

It’s funny that he’s using a list produced by the Obama Administration. Even in the most generous interpretation, how can you possibly exclude Afghanistan, a country where there is an active civil war with ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban participating?

Having Iran on the list while keeping Saudi Arabia off the list is just one obvious hypocrisy but that just serves a political purpose and more or less preserves the status quo.

“And the executive order truly lacked any touch of common decency.” That is because Trump and the people around him lack common decency, as anyone with eyes and ears saw and heard during the campaign. Get used to it. This is just the beginning….

Perhaps Trump is also seeking a way to kill the Iran Air/Boeing deal in order to appease the zionist enterprise’s supporters here. Trump willing to put US interests, especially the interests of the US working man, ahead of israel’s interests? I doubt it but we shall see.

“It is quite sensible to block travel by citizens of those countries until one can establish procedures to make sure that militants are not being admitted to the U.S., because embassies overseas have only limited ability to vet prospective visitors or immigrants.”

Excuse me? Somebody sitting in the USA can do better? How?

This whole “vetting” idea is smoke-and-mirrors anyway. The entire question boils down to intent. Does this person intend to commit mayhem? You cannot know what somebody’s intent is. Do you intend to go home and beat your dog? Maybe you do, maybe you don’t, but you are the only one who can answer the question, and you yourself are not really that reliable a source. You may think you don’t intend to beat your dog, yet you may do it anyway.

“To be sure, the Obama administration has insisted that it applies an extreme vetting process to would-be refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, and tourists, but it has failed to provide any details of how the system actually works.”

That is completely false. The information you say has not been provided is easily available from many sources. Just go Google “how the current vetting process works.” You will find, among many others, a link to https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ which, amazingly enough, has disappeared. How could that have happened? We wonders, yes, we wonders, gollum. However, the many others, of which I would point out the excellent review by the Heritage Foundation–a sufficiently right-wing place for most purposes. It’s at http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2015/12/how-the-refugee-vetting-process-works for those, who evidently do not include the present author, who want to know what they’re talking about.

They aren’t citizens. They were granted the privilege of “permanent residence” in the sense that they can live here for ten years. They have to apply to renew. Trump ought to be able to completely stop the whole “green card” process, which is wildly abused – false information on applications, disqualifying criminal convictions overlooked, etc. A lot of green card holders take work away from American citizens and native born Americans.

Green cards can be revoked and no one has a “right” either to renewal or to eventual citizenship. These are all privileges. The American people decide these things as a matter of law.

It’s past timet hat we had our representatives closely review and overhaul immigration law to be far more restrictive and selective. That law isn’t supposed to be a convenience for foreigners and a cash cow for immigration lawyers. It’s supposed to serve the needs of the country as a whole and the native born population in particular.

The reason Americans get killed in Afghanistan, and Iraq and Yemen and Sudan and Syria, is that they are invaders and spooks and such, who are serving interests very much other than what most Americans at home might perceive as “the national interest.” And of course because all the money and career paths and momentum is on the side of more “war is nothing but a racket,” Americans both uniformed and contractor and NGO destabilizes and looters will continue to get killed by “wogs” and “hajjis” as long as they continue to do the stupid stuff that passes for strategy and tactics, in violation of all the fundamental precepts of that Sun Tzu guy who long ago noted that no state could survive prolonged foreign war, particularly one where “heaven” was not on the side of the general. And our mostly corrupt and ineffectual general officers and political leaders sure don’t have “heaven” or “the people” in consideration in doing what they do. No profit in attending to those fundamentals.

“The real issue that Trump is and should be addressing is the federal government’s inability to vet visa applicants, immigrants, and refugees to a level that could be considered sufficient from a national-security perspective…It is quite sensible to block travel by citizens of those countries until one can establish procedures to make sure that militants are not being admitted to the U.S., because embassies overseas have only limited ability to vet prospective visitors or immigrants.”

However, in an article featured today in TAC’s “Of Note,” John Hinderaker questions whether finding an acceptable system of vetting immigrants from the Middle East and African is even possible:

“There is no conceivable way to effectively ‘vet’ immigrants and other travelers from the Middle East and Africa. It would require more resources than we can possibly assign to thoroughly investigate all such travelers…The problem goes much too deep to be addressed by this kind of stopgap measure. What we need is a wholesale revision of our immigration laws, commencing from the principle that immigrants should be admitted only if there is good reason to believe that their presence will be beneficial to existing American citizens.”

Could you please comment on Hinderaker’s suggestion that – short of “a wholesale revision of our immigration laws, commencing from the principle that immigrants should be admitted only if there is good reason to believe that their presence will be beneficial to existing American citizens”– the measures introduced by President Trump on Friday are “mostly pointless”?

“To be sure, the Obama administration has insisted that it applies an extreme vetting process to would-be refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, and tourists, but it has failed to provide any details of how the system actually works.”

in the following outline of the system as it was presented under the Obama administration, what details are found lacking?

what should be included in this program that isn’t? if we’re unable to identify a missing element, how can we say that the program was insufficient? how, then, can we determine that Trump’s edict is “more right than wrong?”

“I personally believe that the United States has a moral obligation to accept a considerable number of refugees and asylum seekers from countries that it has intervened militarily in.”

The US has no responsibility to turn itself into a global “refugee” camp for any reason. The way to deal with Islamic terrorism is to stop occupying Islamic countries and to stop allowing their citizens to colonize ours.

Colonel – I know how the system works. I outlined much of it in my article. What I am questioning is whether you come up with real answers on whom you are dealing with instead of just checking off boxes.

Which leads to Kurt Gayle/Hinderaker: Some potential immigrants will clearly be qualified in that you can learn enough about them from reliable sources of various kinds to make a credible judgement that they will be good and safe residents of the U.S. But many others you will never quite know, which is how I believe the current system operates. I realize there will be shades of gray etc. but unless you can be quite sure of someone I would keep them out. I basically agree with Hinderaker.

The question in my mind (“Why Iran and Sudan”?)seems to have been in yours as well.

I compared (a) the list of 7 countries the U.S. bombed in 2016 with (b) the top 10 countries from which refugees came in 2015 with (c) the 7 countries listed in the EO.

Five countries are on both lists (a) and (b). On list (c), two countries drop out from list (a) (Afghanistan, Pakistan) to be replaced by two countries from list (b) (Iran, Sudan), both among the top ten countries of origin of refugees seeking to enter the U.S.

Among them, the 7 countries on the list published Friday accounted for ~40% of total refugee intake into the U.S. in 2015.

For anyone interested in immigration reform at the legislative level, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), Minority Whip, has just been named Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Immigration (Judiciary Committee).

All of this can be classified as “the sorrows of Empire” and the tragic consequences of pre-emptive war and regime change across the globe, in pursuit of the fantasy of our country’s elites for “Full Spectrum Dominance” of every other nation on Earth.

Can they and we end our crack addiction to continuous war, that has become so essential to economy and employment?

As for those demonizing law abiding Permanent Residents, and calling for their deportation, that is a step so far, that will create a climate of fear and hatred among citizen and immigrant alike, the consequences of which such division will be chaotic, unpredictable and destabilizing – and will not lead to peace at home or abroad. All this, consequent to receiving the wages of endless war.

That’s what really infuriates a lot of Americans about this whole business. Elites demanding that we take in refugees consequent to botched elite foreign policy. Elites demanding that we accept immigrants in order to provide more cheap labor or more voters for elites. Elites demanding that we provide safe haven for ever more various and exotic classes of people that the elites favor, first cramming them into urban enclaves where they wouldn’t be too visible to the rest of us.

The elites were able to manage all this because most Americans didn’t pay much attention to it until it became impossible not to notice it anymore: we wake up to millions of immigrants fighting with us for jobs, to political parties catering to groups that they dare to publicly describe as “the new majority”, and to terror attacks in places like San Bernadino or Orlando.

Well, people finally started paying attention. They didn’t like what they saw. If they want to change or reverse it, that’s up to them. And the people chose Trump in great part becaused he promised to do exactly that.

You’re literally witnessing how ethnic cleansing and fascism start, as we speak. Anyone who supports the actions of the Trump administration, just realize that in the world of our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, you will be the villains of history.

so it’s just an impression rather than a particular component of any given policy . . . a general sense of vulnerability and unease.

it seems to me that if paranoia begins to look like a given, like a natural and inevitable maxim guiding immigration and refugee policy as a result of a decades-long foreign policy . . . you’re barking up the wrong tree. because you’re right, it’s a truism: you can never be 100% sure about anyone. that’s a fool’s errand, you’re never going to control everyone in every space in the country, let alone around the world.

“And Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where Americans are perceived extremely negatively and where most terrorists have actually come from, are not on the list.”

Sing it, brother, and add Afghanistan to that short list too while we’re at it. Somehow the worst offenders always get off scot free, and W was just as guilty of looking the other way on that one. The 911 Commission report was mighty silent on the Saudis, but they, like the nuclear Pakistan, are our allies, and that means you go find some other country to beat up on if you don’t like what they’re doing. Yes, closer vetting is important, but our policy needs to make the remotest amount of sense. This doesn’t.

“Excluding Saudi Arabia from the list of countries of “concern”, should not be a surprise either. Saudi Arabia is undoubtedly one of the most brutal regimes in the world and the source of wahabi terrorism in Syria and Africa. Yet, excluding it clearly signifies a residuum of political correctness toward an “ally”.”

I believe the Bush family was particularly close to the Saudi rulers, and that made them more favorable toward the Saudis post-911.

With all the immense obstacles to devising and implementing a sensible immigration policy–corporate Republicans (dominating the party) who demand cheap labor, new-age Left ideologues, media hacks, and rank-and-file robots (dominating the Democratic party and the media), and Israel and its hirelings demanding open borders in case Israelis need to migrate en masse–“more right than wrong” is probably the best we can hope for for some time.

The coasts still don’t get how so many in America are on a downward standard of living and having difficulty in making enough money.

There is a direct correlation to having millions illegally admitted, with the downward pressure on the wages of Americans, as easily exploited illegals take their jobs for much less money.

If some. Illegal immigrants were taking the well paid sinecures of most liberal commentators, you would hear no end of howls.

It is impossible, as much as the advocates deny it, to have mass immigration influxes during periods of economic instability for millions of those already here, citizens and legal residents alike, without experiencing pushback.

As the mainstream media now admit, they missed the very existence and situation outside of their bubbles, considering the wellbeing of all those in flyover country as irrelevant. Unfortunately, they haven’t yet learned their lesson.

Caught up in the euphoria of Dow 20,000, there is little compassion for the millions of law abiding Americans in the economic free fire zone they dismiss as flyover country. The creative destruction by which millionaire MIT math and physics geniuses have leveled vast stretches of middle America is celebrated, a victory to them like loving the smell of economic napalm in the morning.

They try to delude us that they are saving America, changing it by destroying Americans’ hopes.

There ought to be compassion for the displaced their wars have uprooted, no doubt.

But charity, unlike fake compassion, begins first at home.

They claim to love the world in the abstract, but they practice hating Americans at home. They beggar their neighbors close at hand, exploiting without discrimination everyone else, citizen and immigrant alike.

I think it would be helpful to examine the nature of visa applicants and refugee/asylum seeker claimants Is this a reward offered for collaboration with U.S. or NATO forces? Is money changing hands (aside from the normal processing fees)?

Philip Giraldi writes of his belief that the U.S. “has a moral obligation” to accept refugees, “from countries that it has intervened militarily in.” The term military intervention is used here, presumably, to de-legitimize the sovereign government of the country. Elsewise, it would be war. Iraq, Syria, and Libya all had sovereign governments that the U.S. “militarily intervened in,” meaning, we went to war with those countries. As Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and Dennis Kucinich are now trying to convince us, this was wholly inappropriate in Syria, and there appears now to be broad consensus that our pretexts for going to war in Iraq was fabricated, and wholly illegitimate in Libya.

“Military intervention” is not an inaccurate term, but it is an insufficient one for assessing the morality of said interventions. Having intervened unnecessarily and unjustly, do we have a moral obligation to accept refugees, or a moral obligation to rebuild? The relatively small percentage of refugees accepted for resettlement in the U.S. would in no way atone for the “intervention”. So it really isn’t a moral obligation, it’s a poor excuse for not fulfilling the moral obligation. We had a moral — as well as a U.N. — obligation not to intervene. Having failed in our moral obligations, we are now left to ponder retribution. Refugee resettlement is an insufficient remedy regardless of the numbers. If one adjudges the interventions as necessary or just, the morality of refugee resettlement still requires explication accordingly.

“Having intervened unnecessarily and unjustly, do we have a moral obligation to accept refugees, or a moral obligation to rebuild?”

I think e have a moral obligation to redress problems created by the US. I am not in agreement tat means we have import the same.

Again there is not compelling trait that forces them to engage in their own machines of war. Given the current relationship between Iraq and Iran, I am not certain we are welcome, even if we wanted to engage purely humanitarian reasons.

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I read some of the Judge’s biography, an reasoning and I don’t see much in the way of legal analysis for her interference.

We have a million legal immigrants a year coming into the US plus refugees. Why and what purpose does it serve America? Do we owe other countries’ citizens more than we owe our own citizens? Idealism aside, let’s be pragmatic and look at immigration as to how it will benefit the US.